Church & Carltonhttps://churchandcarlton.net
The Home of the Leafs in the Heart of the Village
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3232It Grittyhttps://churchandcarlton.net/2018/10/02/it-gritty/
https://churchandcarlton.net/2018/10/02/it-gritty/#respondTue, 02 Oct 2018 17:32:27 +0000http://churchandcarlton.net/?p=831Continue reading It Gritty]]>Hey, party people. So, funny story: a couple weeks ago, I was watching old episodes of Passions on YouTube and bumped my laptop. Not like, super hard, but hard enough to make it crap its pants. The hard drive is still shipshape, but Sheridan and Luis suddenly had crazy green and purple lines all over their faces and a big black box covered a solid fifth of the screen. Not only did the replacement part cost $800 that I do not have, but the part is now stuck indefinitely at the border, presumably due to some NAFTA bullshit. The result is that A) I cannot record my podcast until further notice, B) I am profoundly broke, and C) I had to watch the entire “Sheridan falls in a river” arc on my phone LIKE A PEASANT.

I’m not going to give you the whole “plz halp me i am disabled uwu” speech, but I am going to try to write little blurbs on my lunch break for the next little while and link to my Ko.fi page because it’s hard out here for a girl, especially one who enjoys things like “using electricity” and “living indoors.”

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Unless you’ve been living under a rock (or you’re like, European), chances are that over the last week, you’ve become extremely familiar with Gritty.

It him.

Gritty, the recently unveiled mascot for the Philadelphia Flyers, appears to be the demented lovechild of Youppi! and Sweetums from The Muppets. He wriggles, he jiggles, he does the Macarena, he falls down – you know, normal stuff. We stan a #Relatable legend. He is beautiful and terrible, an exquisite abomination. Naturally, the Internet fell immediately, irrevocably in love.

Gritty is our best friend. Gritty is the Alpha and the Omega. We would die for Gritty. We would kill for Gritty. Gritty is our God now.

An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified.But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people.”

In all seriousness, Gritty, in all his lunatic glory, is probably the best thing that’s happened to the Philadelphia Flyers in ages. I mean, really. When was the last time you thought about the Philadelphia Flyers B.G.? (B.G stands for Before Gritty. This is how we measure time now. I’m sorry, I don’t make the rules.)

The correct answer, unless you are a Flyers fan, is “Uh, I don’t know? I guess whenever we played them last season?” Which, you know, fair. They are the Philadelphia Flyers. But now Gritty is here and the Flyers are suddenly the rulers of Hockey Twitter, uniting players and fans from across the sports world in pure meme bliss. Gritty is such a perfect distillation of neo-Dadaist Millennial internet humour that the Flyers have gone from being the Binky Barnes of the NHL to the really cool rabbit chick with the denim vest. Everybody wants to be, if not outright followed by Gritty, at least Gritty-adjacent. He is social media currency in its purest form.

Most importantly. he’s goofy. In the self-important, super-serious world of NHL marketing, Gritty is a necessary breath of fresh air. Hockey, at its best, is big dumb fun, and no team has ever epitomized big dumb fun quite like the Philadelphia Flyers. Gritty is 100% industrial-grade Big Dumb Fun. It’s the Age of Gritty, y’all. Better get on board because this train is bound for glory.

Same.

If you’d like to see more quality Gritty content in future, you can donate to my blog here.

The first season of Church & Carlton draws to a close with the story of Tom Longboat, a well-known historical figure whose athletic prowess has been allowed to overshadow his lifetime of quiet resistance for too long.

Thank you so much for supporting Church & Carlton. If you want to help make the second season even better, consider a small donation to my Patreon.

If anyone in figure skating can be called a genius, it’s Evgenia Medvedeva. But “genius” is a loaded word, and the way we apply it says a lot about whose art we value.

It’s our season finale next week, believe it or not. If you enjoyed this season, please consider donating to my Patreon – a few bucks an episode goes a long way towards making Church & Carlton possible.

Hi, I’m E.C. Marcon and this is Church and Carlton, a bi-weekly podcast about the intersection of sports and life in Toronto.

I was never really much of a figure skating fan before this year.

I mean, I loved Tessa and Scott like everybody else and was always transfixed by it during the Olympics, but it was something I would forget about and rediscover every four years.

But the 2018 Pyeongchang Games made me into a fan for several reasons, not the least which was the Olympic debut of Russian skater Evgenia Medvedeva.

If the name sounds familiar, it’s probably because the two-time silver medalist became the centre of controversy when her flawless Anna Karenina-inspired free skate was beaten out for gold by teammate Alina Zagitova’s. It sparked a debate over whether Zagitova’s technical mastery was objectively better than Medvedeva’s breathtaking artistry.

This is not a new debate in figure skating by any means, but the general consensus this time around was that while Zagitova may have been the better skater in the final, Medvedeva has…it. Je ne said quoi. X factor. A rare gift or innate talent. Divine inspiration. Genius.

And now that Evgenia Medvedeva is living and training in Toronto, I think it’s a term that’s worth exploring in the context of female athletes.

As Emily Atkin wrote in The New Republic after Stephen Hawking’s death,”young women tend not to see themselves as geniuses—or being capable of becoming geniuses.”

This isn’t just a vague assertion – there is a veritable truckload of science to back it up.

In 2015, Swedish gender studies professor Hillevi Ganetz released the results of a study on the media’s treatment of Nobel laureates. Besides the fact that only 6% of all Nobel laureates are female, female laureates are almost never described in the media as geniuses and their work is rarely discussed. Through her research, Ganetz found the female Nobel laureates were asked over and over about topics like work-life balance, motherhood, their husbands, and their clothing choices for the awards ceremony. Male laureates, however, were asked about their research, their process, and their inspirations.

Over time, a pattern emerged: women who had won Nobel prizes were portrayed as hard workers who’d achieved success through sacrificing a traditional maternal role. But the men were invariably described as geniuses.

Hillevi Ganetz is not the first sociologist to realize this – not by a longshot. There are countless studies that show we inherently associate the term “genius” with men, and that popular culture tends to portray genius as something innate and god-given. Think Sherlock or House. It’s to the point where researchers at the University of Kentucky found that by age six, most girls believe that boys are naturally smarter.

So where does that leave women in sports, a world where they’re already ignored and undervalued to begin with? In hockey, pundits always talk about “Hockey IQ” or “hockey sense” and how it’s something you can’t teach. And most major sports have a similar term for that elusive it factor that elevates certain players above the rank-and-file.

Figure skating, however, is often dismissed as “not a real sport” or “for girls” and so the women who excel at it are rarely talked about in mainstream sports media in the first place. But when it comes to “figure skating IQ” or “god-given talent” or whatever you want to call it, there is no doubt that Evgenia Medvedeva has it in abundance.

This is somebody who is changing their sport, a generational talent who is able to marry athleticism and artistry and make it look effortless. And she almost never gets any credit for being an artist, even though it’s obvious from the minute she takes the ice that you’re watching someone special.

During the Olympics, Hillevi Ganitz was proved right over and over again as the media focussed on Medvedeva’s love of stuffed animals and boy bands and a supposed rivalry with her protegee Alina Zagitova. How did she get into character for her emotional free skate? Why did she choose to lipsynch during her gala performance knowing it would add an extra level of difficulty? How did she master the incredibly difficult art of jumping with her arms above her head?

We don’t know any of that. Because instead of focussing on her obvious intelligence and ferocious drive to succeed, most Olympic coverage seemed bent on reassuring us that she was a harmless little girl.

Which is not to say theres somethingwrong with being a little girl, but girlhood and genius are not mutually exclusive. And at the end of the day, Evgenia Medvedeva is a genius.

Church and Carlton is written and produced by me, E.C. Marcon. Original music by the great Josh Labelle.

If you liked what you heard, and I hope you did, check out my website at www.churchandcarlton.net There, you’ll find links to my Patreon and social media.

We’ll be back with a brand-new episode in two weeks. It will be our season finale.Until then, I’m E.C. Marcon and I know I’ve said this one before but oh my god, people. I don’t care how hot it is – do not take your shoes off on the patio.

Hi, I’m E. C. Marcon and this is Church & Carlton, a bi-weekly podcast about the intersection of sports and life in Toronto.

The great Leonard “Red” Kelly needs no introduction, but the medium demands I give him one anyway. Eight-time Stanley Cup Champion, eight-time NHL All-Star, three-time Lady Byng Trophy winner, Norris Trophy winner, Hockey Hall of Fame Honoured Member, the Honourable Member of Parliament for York-West from 1962-1965, and member of the Order of Canada, the affable defenceman is living proof that nice guys don’t always finish last.

I met him last year, and he spent a good ten minutes telling me about all of his cats. He’s absolutely lovely.

As a beloved alumni of both the Detroit Red Wings and the Toronto Maple Leafs, Kelly holds almost mythical status in the hockey world, and the fact that he’s still sharp as a tack at 90 has made him a popular figure at alumni events.

In his single term in Parliament as a member of the Liberal Party, he was the mastermind behind the Great Canadian Flag Debate, ensuring that the iconic maple leaf design replaced any visual representation of the British Empire. This not only endeared him to an Irish-Canadian community in desperate need of a champion, but made him an integral part of developing Canada’s distinct national identity.

His impact on both the game of hockey and the game of Canadian politics is immeasurable. But as a coach in 1970s, Red Kelly would become a pioneer in another, more subtle way. And while it seemed totally bonkers at the time, Kelly’s lifelong devotion to being on the right side of history is actually pretty touching.

Red Kelly coached the Toronto Maple Leafs from 1973 to 1976, and in that time, he became fascinated by the nascent field of sports psychology. And he began to research all kinds of pseudoscientific techniques to boost his players’ confidence.

Don’t forget, this is a guy who played for Punch Imlach and saw Ron Ellis, Mike Walton, Terry Sawchuk, Frank Mahovlich, and Tim Horton suffer from some serious mental health issues. And by the time he started coaching, Darryl Sittler was struggling pretty hard too.

In 1976, the Leafs had to face defending champions The Philadelphia Flyers in the second round of the NHL playoffs. This was peak Broad Street Bullies era, and the Flyers’ brute strength and, let’s say, nonchalant attitude towards the rules had made them virtually unstoppable. Toronto had just emerged victorious from a tough series against the Pittsburgh Penguins. They were exhausted, beat up, and demoralized. Kelly had to find a way to motivate them.

So he thought back to a few years earlier, when his young daughter Casey was suffering from mysterious headaches. The headaches were excruciating, and Casey would work herself into such a panic about getting a headache that she would end up triggering them. It was a vicious cycle and nothing the Kellys did to help her seemed to work. But Red’s wife Andra discovered a weird new-agey technique all the hippies were trying – pyramid power.

Pyramid power is a nutty theory spread by the same people who think aliens built the ones in Egypt. It was kinda like the essential oils craze of its day. Square-based pyramids apparently give off a certain frequency that promotes positive vibrations or…something. It was stupid, but Casey was a little girl and she was in a lot of pain so the Kellys made a little pyramid and told her that if she slept with it under her pillow, it would keep the headaches away.

No longer afraid of getting the headaches, Casey stopped getting the headaches and Red Kelly realized that even if pyramid power was a bunch of crap, the psychological boost from having a perceived lucky charm was definitely real. Remember Ned Hanlan and his Chinese Perfume?

So Red Kelly built a giant plastic pyramid and he hung it from the ceiling of the Leafs’ dressing room. He used his political training to craft a convincing, scientific-sounding explanation for the players, and watched in amazement as they each took a turn standing underneath it to absorb its power.

You can insert your own joke about the intelligence of hockey players here.

The Leafs lost the series, but they made it to Game 7 and the troubled Darryl Sittler played some of the best hockey of his life. When asked about it afterwards, Kelly admitted that the whole thing was more psychological than scientific: “I was trying to do some stuff to distract things away from Harold Ballard saying things about the club,” he said. “I was trying to get the guys thinking hockey and never mind the other stuff.” And it worked. The Leafs may not have won the series, but they played focussed, confident hockey.

What is really touching and sweet to me about this crazy story is that Red Kelly cared so much about the mental health of his players. Winning was one thing, but he wanted his players to be happy and healthy and to enjoy themselves on the ice. And that motivated him to turn a cute trick to get his sick daughter to sleep into a bona fide sports psychology strategy. He tried other techniques over the years – back when they were playing together, he once spritzed a nervous Johhny Bower with water he told him was “energized with negative ions” and he had his players wear earmuffs on the bench to drown out fan taunting. He did a lot of things that seemed ridiculous, but were ultimately done to show his teammates and his players that he cared about them. It was a complete 180 from the dominant coaching style of the day and brought a level of empathy and sensitivity to the locker room that’s still lacking in the sport now.

Yeah, there’s no such thing as pyramid power. But when you consider that several players made off with Kelly’s little pyramids as fond mementos of their coach, there really is something to compassion.

Church and Carlton is written and produced by me, E.C. Marcon. The idea for this episode was given to me by my dad, by far the biggest supporter of this podcast so Happy Birthday, Gianni. Original music by the one and only Josh Labelle.

If you liked what you heard, and I hope you did, check out my website at www.churchandcarlton.net There, you’ll find links to my Patreon and social media.

We’ll be back with a brand-new episode in two weeks. Until then, I’m E.C. Marcon reminding you to make up your mind before you get in the gelato line.

Punch Imlach didn’t typically use his trolling powers for good, but when he did, it was a thing of beauty,

If you like what you heard, my Patreon is here. Perks included high quality downloads of Josh Labelle’s soundtrack and your very own Fighting Baseball name.

A full, plaint text transcript of today’s episode can be found under the cut. As always, you can reach with me with any concerns about accessibility at ecmarconTO@gmail.com

E.C.

Hi, I’m E.C. Marcon and this is Church and Carlton, a bi-weekly podcast about the intersection of sports and life in Toronto.

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No point in dancing around it – I am still completely shaken what happened on Monday. We seem to know very little about the man who killed 10 people at Yonge and Finch and injured 14 others aside from the fact that he appeared to deeply, violently hate women.

I had the show ready to go yesterday but to be honest, I was still reeling from a number of things: I have a huge extended family in Ireland who was very concerned for my well-being, and it really hit home for me that Yonge and Finch is a neighbourhood of first, second, and third generation Canadians. I live nowhere near the scene of the attack but I still had family on the other side of the ocean who were emotionally affected by what happened and I’m sure most of the people in the neighbourhood are in the same boat.

Toronto truly is a global city and what happens here sends ripples throughout the world. I hope and pray that we continue to protect our incredible diversity as, all cliches aside, it really is our greatest strength.

In the wake of this tragedy, I offer a bizarre and delightful story to celebrate the bizarre and delightful city we call home. No matter what happens, we are still a city of creative, clever, and deliciously weird people and that thought is what’s keeping me going this week.

Without further ado, here’s Episode 12 of Church & Carlton.

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If you know anything at all about the Toronto Maple Leafs, you know that the legacy of long-time coach Punch Imlach is…complicated. The winningest coach in Leafs history led the team to four Stanley Cups in the 1960s, including the fabled one in 1967. His legendary status in the hockey world is comparable to Knute Rockne in football or Phil Jackson in basketball. But his relationship with his players was, to put it mildly, troubled. And his reputation as a tyrannical, emotionally abusive control freak is not entirely undeserved.

But if anyone knew Punch Imlach was a total bastard, it was Punch Imlach. And he absolutely revelled in his cultivated bastardry. Explosive showdowns with players, literally hiding from the press – he fully leaned in to his public image as a nightmare person. He started shit with everyone from Frank Mahovlich and Darryl Sittler to his supposed best friend Harold Ballard.

Imlach drove Frank Mahovlich, Ron Ellis, and Mike Walton into therapy. He bribed Tim Horton to keep playing through his injuries with the sports car that he died in. He punished Darryl Sittler for backtalk by trading his best friend. And keep in mind, these were not exactly young rookies with no power. This is equivalent to Mike Babcock bashing Auston Matthews’ character in the press after a bad game or punishing Morgan Rielly by trading Jake Gardiner.

Punch Imlach, for lack of a better phrase, was freakin’ nuts. In Dungeons and Dragons, he would absolutely be chaotic evil.

But every once in a while, his talent for starting shit went beyond mere pettiness and entered the realm of genius performance art.

By 1974, Imlach had been fired from the Maple Leafs and was coaching expansion team the Buffalo Sabres. In the mid-70’s, the NHL was in trouble. Upstart rival league the Western Hockey Association had lured players like Bobby Hull and Gordie Howe, and for the first time in nearly 60 years, the NHL wasn’t the only game in town anymore.

Keep in mind, this is pre-Raptors, pre-Blue Jays. Hockey and football were essentially the only pro sports Canadians could watch, so the NHL was completely thrown off guard by having any kind of competition.

The league was concerned that the WHA would send spies to scope out potential draft picks and lure them over to their side, so in the early NHL president Clarence Campbell declared that year’s NHL draft would be done over the phone.

If you’re having trouble figuring out the logistics of a draft by telephone, so did they. It was a miserable and tedious process. And Punch Imlach had no patience at this best of times. So, to make things interesting, he decided to surprise everyone by drafting Japanese superstar Taro Tsujimoto.

Taro Tsujimoto? The hockey world was stunned. How had it never heard of such a prodigious young talent? But Imlach assured them that the star centre for the Tokyo Katanas was going to change the NHL forever, and lead the Buffalo Sabres to victory. Thrilled by the prospect of an international phenom, the NHL awaited Tsujimoto’s arrival with bated breath.

But he never came.

Because Taro Tsujimoto didn’t exist.

All summer, the press speculated what it might mean for the future of the North American game if Tsujimoto turned out to be as good as Imlach said he was. And Imlach, one imagines, spent the summer laughing his ass off. When reporters asked about Tsujimoto’s absence at training camp, Imlach admitted that he’d made the whole thing up just to be a bastard. He and NHL PR Director Paul Wieland had invented him as a protest against the closed-door draft. See, Weiland had a buddy called Josh Tsujimoto, Taro was the first name they found when they looked up popular Japanese names, Tokyo was the only Japanese city they could think of and “katana” meant “sword.” As in “sabre.” Get it? You get it.

The league was pissed. But Punch Imlach got away with it because he was Punch Imlach, and really, in the pantheon of batshit crazy things he’d done, this was at least relatively harmless. Taro Tsujimoto became a beloved urban legend among Sabres fans, with people facetiously bring Tsujimoto signs and banners to games. And Imlach went back to what he did best – making players miserable.

I find this story hilarious not just for the sheer ballsiness of what Imlach did but because it illustrates how insular the North American hockey world is. Nobody at any point thought to verify the story by say, looking up whether or not the Tokyo Katanas existed. And I know it was pre-Google but come on. The conviction that North American hockey was the only hockey that mattered meant that none of the NHL brass or North American hockey press knew that Japan had a respected professional hockey league since 1966 and that it was actively recruiting players from the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.

It’s a good lesson for aspiring hockey journalists like myself – you can’t just write down everything a coach or a player or a GM tells you and call it a day. Of course, not everyone is as big a troll as Punch Imlach, but I think it’s wise to remember that what you see isn’t always what you get. And what you don’t see just might be Taro Tsujimoto.

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Church and Carlton is written and produced by me, E.C. Marcon. Original music is by Josh Labelle. If you like what you heard, and I hope you did, check out my website at www.churchandcarlton.net

There, you can find links to my Patreon and social media. We’ll be back with a brand new episode of Church and Carlton in two weeks – until next time, don’t take your shoes off at the park.

In light of devastating recent events in the Canadian sports world, a story about hope, community, and boundless joy.

To send some light to the people of Humboldt, you can donate to the Go Fund Me here (it’s already one of the Top 5 most successful Go Fund Me’s in history) or to the Canadian Mental Health Association’s Saskatchewan chapter here.

Toronto has bid on the Olympics five times, and each time, it blew up in our faces in the most Toronto way possible.

Tune in next Friday for another Olympic-themed episode, this one on the low-key sexual revolution of Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir. (Just trust me on this.) In the meantime, visit my Patreon and be sure to keep checking back here for my first attempts at vlogging. If nothing else, you can marvel at my total lack of makeup skills

A dramatic reading of last year’s Christmas post, “Honky The Christmas Goose” tells the story of my favourite piece of Leafs esoterica. You can hear the original song here.

My Patreon has already helped me to buy a nice pair of snow boots (Thanks!), so from here on out, it will mostly be funding my research trips to the Toronto Archives and the Toronto Reference Library (subway fare, printing costs, caffeine, etc…). If you’d like to donate, you can do so here.